This Bureaucracy Is Killing Me!
Coworkers, Hospital, Jerk, Rotterdam, The Netherlands | Healthy | October 13, 2018
(I am working the night shift in a student team. One of our tasks is getting blood and stuff for the operating surgeons all around the hospital. This night a sixteen-year-old boy on a scooter has been hit by a car and is haemorrhaging profusely. I am called to get blood for the blood transfusion that needs to be done. However, due to the fact the boy is being reanimated while receiving a blood transfusion and an operation, there is no time to fill in a form. This is the conversation I have with the man at the blood lab
Me: “Hey, I don’t have a form, but I need blood for the sixteen-year-old patient that’s bleeding out downstairs.”
Blood Lab: “If you don’t have the form, you don’t get the blood.”
Me: “But they don’t have the time to fill in a form, as they are operating on him while giving a blood transfusion, and he was just reanimated.”
Blood Lab: “But you don’t have a form.”
Me: “Yes, I know, but the boy is dying.”
Blood Lab: “Well, it’s not my fault if he dies; come back when you have the form.”
(Sir, I know that you were technically right, but is a form more important than the life of a sixteen-year-old boy?!)
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Looking After One Child So Much You Forget About The Other
Hospital, Ignoring & Inattentive, Kansas City, Missouri, Parents/Guardians, Patients, USA | Healthy | October 12, 2018
My mother was a pediatric cardiac nurse and was taking care of a boy who had just had open heart surgery. She left for the weekend, and this story was relayed to her the next morning she was in.
The mother of the young boy suddenly started to have severe abdominal pains during the night. The nurse realized after checking her over that she had forgotten to ask her a very important question: when was the last time she had had her period? The mother said, “Oh, it’s coming any day now.”
The nurse looked at the nurse supervisor who was helping her. This is a children’s hospital, so they had no labor and delivery ward. The supervisor started to panic. This hospital is up the road from another, adult hospital. So, the supervisor decided to put the mother in a wheelchair and push her down to the adult hospital. This hospital is located at the top of a hill, so as he was pushing her down to the other hospital, the wheelchair slipped out of his hand. Luckily, he caught her before she got too far away, and got her to the adult hospital before she delivered the baby.
When my mom got back that Monday, she went to the boy’s room and saw that the mother was back already. She found that the mother had been so focused on taking care of her son before his surgery and getting him the surgery that she hadn’t realized she hadn’t had her period in over seven months.
Luckily, both the son and baby were able to leave the hospital soon after, and last my mother heard they were all doing well.